Much to the chagrin of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party has put on the back burner the issue of his home minister and close aide Amit Shah's arrest by CBI.

It is not that the BJP no longer wants to defend Shah but it is not in the priority list of issues to be taken up immediately in the ongoing session lest it gives handle to the Congress to succeed in its strategy of dividing the opposition in parliament, highly placed BJP sources said.

The party will certainly raise the issue of “misuse of CBI” to harass political adversaries but only at a later stage, according to Gopinath Munde, deputy leader of BJP in the Lok Sabha.

He said the BJP parliamentary party meeting on Tuesday identified 11 issues for focus through call-attention and other methods, but these will be taken up only after forcing a debate and voting on the recent fuel price hike.

The issues so identified include Indo-Pak talks fiasco, increasing rail accidents, Maoist violence, Bhopal gas tragedy victims' compensation and then Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson's escape with the Congress government's “connivance”, poor preparations for the Commonwealth Games in October and deteriorating law and order in Delhi.

Shah has been arrested for his alleged role in the 2005 killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in a fake encounter.

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Shah quizzed by CBI at Sabarmati jail

Ahmedabad

The CBI on Wednesday grilled for more than four hours former Gujarat minister Amit Shah in Sabarmati jail for his alleged role in the killing of suspected gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife in 2005.

A CBI team started interrogating 46-year-old Shah around 11 AM and his quizzing continued till around 3.30 PM, sources in the Central agency said.

The questioning of Shah, lodged in Tilak barrack of Sabarmati Jail near here after being arrested last Sunday, is likely to continue tomorrow.

The BJP leader was asked questions pertaining to the kidnapping of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausar Bi and their killings, political compulsions for conducting the encounter and alleged involvement of Rajasthan marble lobby in it, the sources said.

The CBI team was led by Chief Investigating Officer of the case Amitabh Thakur.

The entire questioning process was videographed as per the instruction of the special CBI court, they said.

The court has permitted the investigating agency to question Shah inside the jail from July 28 to 30.

As per the charge sheet filed by CBI last week, Shah has been booked for murder, kidnapping, extortion, destruction of evidence and criminal conspiracy, among other charges.

According to the charge sheet, the police officials of Gujarat ATS and Rajasthan Special Task Force (STF) had allegedly stage managed the encounter of Sohrabuddin near Ahmedabad.

Shah had allegedly entrusted the job of eliminating Sohrabuddin to three senior IPS officers -- D G Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandiyan and Abhay Chudasama, the CBI document claimed.

"Elimination of Sohrabuddin was being used for extortion by the accused persons to establish an element of fear in the minds of the businessmen and others," it alleged.

According to the charge sheet, Shah was in constant touch over telephone with Vanzara when Sohrabuddin and his wife were in the custody of Gujarat Police. It further alleged that Vanzara was instructed by Shah to eliminate Kausar Bi as she was a key witness to her husband's abduction.

After the case was transferred to CBI in January this year, Shah had directed Ajay Patel and Yashpal Chudasama, his close confidants, to "convince, coerce, threaten and influence the witnesses on his behalf to conceal the truth from CBI about the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin", the charge sheet alleged.

Amin asks for chargesheet, gets to view it

Ahmedabad

Police officer N K Amin, one of the accused in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter killing case who wants to become an approver, was today shown the chargesheet filed by CBI last week.

Amin, who was brought from the Sabarmati central jail to the district court in connection with some other case, filed an application in the CBI court asking for a copy of the chargesheet.

His application was approved by the court and he was allowed to see the chargesheet in the court room itself.

Amin, who wants to turn an approver in the case, had also sought pardon from the court in an application filed by him day before yesterday.

However, eight accused in the case, including three suspended IPS officers--D G Vanzara, Dinesh M N and Rajkumar Pandian -have objected to Amin's plea to turn approver.

According to the CBI chargesheet, Amin, though he was not posted with ATS, was in constant touch with Vanzara, Pandiyan and Amit Shah, the then Gujarat Minister of State for Home during the period when Sohrabuddin was killed in a police encounter in November 2005.

"He (Amin) made/received as many as 25 calls from/to Shah between November 21, 2005 and November 30, 2005," it said.

Meanwhile, one of the absconders in the fake encounter case Yashpal Chudasama today filed an application through his lawyer seeking a copy of the chargesheet.

CBI has already declared Chudasama and Ajay Patel as absconders and issued non-bailable warrants against them. The duo are close aides of Amit Shah who has been arrested in the case.

After the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case was transferred to CBI by the Supreme Court, Shah had directed Ajay Patel and Yashpal Chudasama to "convince, coerce, threaten, influence the witnesses on his behalf to conceal the truth from CBI about the fake encounter of Sohrabuddin", the chargesheet said.

Patel conveyed a message to two witnesses in the case, Raman and Dashrat Patel, that what they would be saying before CBI would be supplied to them in the form of statements by DCP Abhay Chudasama, who is also an accused, it said.

Both witnesses had four meetings with middlemen sent by Shah at separate places.

These meetings were videographed by the two witnesses in a discreet manner. This audio-visual recording has been seized by CBI.

"The audio-visual records indicate that Ajay Patel and Yashpal Chudasama had actively participated in the main conspiracy and the crime committed in furtherance to the conspiracy," the chargesheet said.

Raman Patel and Dashrat Patel are owners of real estate firm Popular Builders.

Gujarat police had stage managed a shootout in the company's office in December 2004 for the purpose of lodging an FIR against Sheikh, it said.